Located just south of Ethiopia, Kenya is well known for producing excellent cups of coffee primarily due to the excellent research and development of coffee and the country’s highly educated farmers.

In Kenya, regardless of whether the lot is traceable, a grading system is being used for all its exported coffee based on the bean size, and some of you may have yet to come across terms such as AA, AB, and PB when looking at a bag of Kenyan coffee.

This coffee comes from the Central Region of Kenya, with rich volcanic soil in which it is grown and a high altitude of 1,700 - 2,000 meters above sea level, allowing the coffee to develop bold and complex flavors.

In this washed lot, you will get a floral aroma, with notes of berries and chocolate in the cup, with a nice body and an after-taste that lingers.

Uganda Mountain Harvest

Mountain Harvest’s coffee has become one of the most popular Ugandas in a very short time. The coffee is rich in chocolate-covered raisin sweetness, full-bodied, and has just enough stone fruit flavor and earthy florals to make it an outstanding please-everyone profile.   

Mountain Harvest is a very progressive producer group in Uganda, investing heavily in their farmers’ equity in the final product and constantly diversifying their cup profiles available to buyers. 

Mount Elgon and Mountain Harvest  

Mount Elgon is a massive peak split nearly in two by the border of Uganda and Kenya. The “mountain” itself, now an extinct shield volcano, is an enormous expanse of successive plateaus floating dramatically above the surrounding valley floor. It is also home to a dense patchwork of farming communities growing some of the best organic coffee in Africa.   

Mountain Harvest is a young and big-thinking group established in 2017 committed to long-term economic and environmental sustainability for smallholders on Mt. Elgon. These farmers are Uganda’s highest and most diversified coffee growers with incredible quality potential thanks to the climate, soil fertility, and a longstanding culture of land stewardship. 

To raise the economic standard in remote coffee-growing Elgon communities, Mountain Harvest began as an impact investing project underwritten by Lutheran World Relief (LWR). It has expanded in just a few years to include farmer education and training, central processing infrastructure, regional storage facilities, detailed quality control, and international marketing. As of this year, Mountain Harvest works with 850 individual smallholders across eight communities on Mt. Elgon, with each farm growing between 600-1,000 coffee trees. Their coffee stands up to the best thoroughly washed Uganda Arabicas we typically taste all year.  

The Supply Chain 

Mountain Harvest organizes growers by the local community. They administer farm management and processing training to calibrate all producers to high specialty standards, and they expedite parchment to their centralized location in Mbale, at the foot of Mt. Elgon. In Mbale, each delivery is cupped against a strict and detailed qualitative and physical grading system and allocated accordingly. A typical smallholder picks coffee daily during harvest, de-pulps it on hand-cranked or generator-powered de-pulpers, sometimes shared between neighboring households, and ferments overnight in small plastic tubs or nylon sacks. Coffee is then rinsed clean and dried in a thin layer on ground tarps or, increasingly, raised screens to improve air circulation.  

Individual parchment deliveries are built into blended containers, single-community lots, and single-delivery micro-lots for sale throughout harvest. Mountain Harvest’s pricing to their producers is a minimum of 10-30% above local market prices and often involves additional premiums for quality. Unlike other regional buyers who exclusively process centrally or buy low-grade, humid, smallholder parchment, Mountain Harvest invests in farmers’ capacity to produce high-specialty, fully-dried parchment coffee within their resources, helping them maximize their margin when they sell.  

Takele Mammo Denbi Konga

This coffee from Takele Mammo Denbi, at 47 years old, is a brand-new participant in the Single Farmer Lots Program this year but has yet to be familiar with the direct export process. Takele is currently stepping down after many years as the Managing Director of the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, of which his farm has been a member. Takele has worked closely with the program, helping it to succeed, but avoiding conflict of interest excluded his coffee from the program. Takele cultivated this single farmer lot on his 8-hectare farm in the Konga district, located in the heart of the coveted Gedeo Zone—the narrow plateau section dense with savvy farmers whose coffee is known as “Yirgacheffe.”

The Konga cooperative is well-known for its quality, and it’s a distinct pleasure having individual farmers from this perennially impressive community to celebrate, not to mention one as dedicated to farmer opportunity as Takele.

The Single Farmer Lots Program

The Single Farmer Lots Program initiative is to remove single farmer lots from the more giant cooperative blends sold through the ECX, taking custody of these precious coffees through a direct sale. The program is a unique micro-channel of almost unprecedented specificity in coffee supply from Ethiopia. Farmers with the drive and means to sell directly are supported, and, in turn, buyers of Ethiopian coffee have access to a portfolio of single-farm lots, un-diluted by the typical cooperative- and exporter-level consolidations.

Annual farm visits and regular communication with farmers through representatives in Ethiopia have ensured that farmers and washing stations follow strict farm management and post-harvest protocols. The results have been increasing cup quality and higher returns for the individual producers that have come to count on excellent coffee year after year.

Muhlisin Agropuro

Situated along the slopes of the Argopuro Volcano is a region in East Java known for its coffee production thanks to the rich volcanic soil and high elevations. The iconic volcano creates the beautiful Javanese landscape in the Situbondo Regency. When coffee was first cultivated in Indonesia, it was common for Dutch colonists to plant low-quality Robusta in large estates. However, the 21st century ignited a shift towards Arabica, especially in East Java, whereby more micro-lots appeared, owned by producers experimenting with new, innovative processing methods.

This lot is one such example of this coffee-quality revolution in Indonesia. Producer and cooperative leader Pak Muhlisin founded the Pokmas Walida Cooperative in 2014 to gather producers in the area and spread awareness about new processing methods to improve quality.

During the harvest, each producer will carefully handpick the cherries and transport them to the collection station adjacent to the Pokmas Walida wet mill. Here, the cherries are submerged in water to remove any floaters to maintain quality. Once sorted, the coffee is placed into large water tanks and covered for 72 hours to initiate fermentation and breaks down the exterior mucilage helping to create a unique-tasting profile. When fermentation is complete, the cherries are evenly dispersed on covered raised beds to dry for 15 days and moved to tarped patios to dry for another ten days. Then, cherries are moved regularly to prevent mold growth. The coffee is ready for hulling once it reaches the ideal water content level. The dried cherries are moved via truck to the dry mill, 50 miles away, to be hulled and set to rest before export.

Panama is an origin that constantly makes headlines in the specialty coffee world, primarily associated with the renowned Gesha variety. But several complexities influence specialty coffee, and it would be a mistake to reduce the complexity of this famous growing region to nothing more than plant variety.

With this lot of Caturra and Catuai from Finca Santa Teresa, there is an opportunity to explore the impact of terroir and different processing techniques on other varieties. Santa Teresa has 240 acres cultivated with coffee, meticulously divided into 20 plots with distinct landscapes and micro-climates, which influence a coffee seed’s maturation and ultimate quality in different ways.

In addition to a mindful and environmentally balanced approach to farm management, Santa Teresa has an experienced team and onsite infrastructure at the farm to ensure attention to detail during the harvest. This Caturra and Catuai lot is honey processed where ripe cherries are floated to remove less dense and damaged seeds, then de-pulped, placed on raised beds, and regularly turned over 8 to 12 days.